Go and Rest Your Bones
A/N: Okay, I know this isn't an update of "Imagine Me and You" and that's saddening BUT the next chapter of that is half-way done and on its way. Unfortunately, some bad news earlier in the week has slowed my roll on writing but alas, my muse still managed to give me this. This piece is for those in the fandom that have minds that will randomly conjure scenarios between Red and Lizzie that would totally never happen on-screen BUT there's still fic. Fic is beautiful. Here, have some fic.
This is part 1/2, and the second part with be M, so. Be forewarned.
Disclaimed. Reviews are much appreciated.
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The first comes when all the lights has left, even the moon that hangs like a noose, when she's lying awake, barely clothed, in a cold bed. It's too early. He should know it's too early, but Raymond Reddington is the type of man to do what he wants to do, and she knows that.
She hates it.
She loves it.
That's kind of the whole point of any of this.
"Lizzie," he says her name all gruff and tumble, says her name like he's said it a thousand times, back of his hand. She wonders if he'll ever call her Liz, call her what she wants. She doesn't want him calling her at all, but he is, and he goes, "Lizzie," and it's funny because it's almost as if he's called and has nothing to say but her name.
And then, like he's gained confidence she knows he possesses in hives, he goes, "Lizzie, call me back, or answer the phone."
Demands, always demands. He wants something from her.
Something, not her. Never her.
(She wasn't special. She was never special, and he lied, lied, lied.)
But then—
"Please."
It's a last resort, that last word. The voicemail ends, and Lizzie is laying in a motel bed and looking up at the ceiling covered in pictures and thinking yes, please. Please, Red. Look at how you've gutted me. Look at how you're killing me. Please, please say something to make this right again.
But it ends, it does. The voicemail ends and Lizzie hangs up the cell phone, and keeps staring at his picture.
It's four-thirty in the morning, and she can't fathom a world where Raymond Reddington is thinking of her at this time of day without it being about something. The fulcrum is sharp in her hand, wet, but the tears in her eyes have dried. She sleeps with the foreign object tucked beneath her pillow, because it's almost as if a part of her soul knows the worth. Inanimate and life changing. Something so important in a place so shitty like a cheap stay-motel, it's funny.
The heating in this place is faulty, and she should have on more clothes than she does.
But, well, she's always cold these days.
Lizzie listens to that first voicemail twice before she deletes it.
Can't, for the life of her, stop shivering.
/
The second goes like this:
"Lizzie, you need to answer your phone. I can't keep you safe if you shut me out. I know this is hard for you. I know you want to be left alone, but we need to talk. Lizzie, call me back. Lizzie."
He ends it with her name.
He ends it with her name, and Lizzie doesn't listen to any voicemails after that, either.
She never deletes that one, truth be told. It's disgusting of her insecurity, and she'd never admit it to anybody but God, but Lizzie saves it and listens again and then maybe again because of I can't keep you safe. It's silly, because she knows better, logic wins out, but to hear that phrase, to know that he wants to keep her safe, her, not the fulcrum, her. Her.
All the devastation gets a little better, after that voicemail. She pulls herself together enough to get to work, because before that second voicemail, she didn't know if she was going to have the mental and emotional strength to pull herself from the bed, get dressed, be a person.
And it's silly, because she knows better than to think anything is about her.
He has something he wants from you, she remembers Naomi Hyland saying.
Naomi knew better, and now she does, too. And she wishes, so much, that it could be last week. Just last week, and he'd be telling her about fish, and she'd be believing. Trusting. Hoping. Because, well, life is easier with hope. Naomi didn't say that, but she should've.
Lizzie knows better.
/
After Uzbekistan, she still knows better.
/
It's different, though. Begrudgingly, she'll admit that she's still got her health, still got a job to do. He was right, in that second voicemail. Elizabeth resigns herself to knowing he will continue to stand in the middle of her life until he finds what he wants, until he leaves. The problem is, really, that it's not that she wants him to leave at all. She wants him to find what he wants and stay. Note: it's not her he wants.
Never her, never her.
The fulcrum, so.
She can hide it from him, she can.
It would break her to see him go so easy.
(Lizzie was good at hide and seek when she was little, but she doesn't remember this. Red does. Red remembers fires and screaming and a small girl with a burning hand.)
/
She resigns herself that there will have to be tangos, will have to be his voice in her ear, maybe even a few stories. No, lots of stories. It's Raymond Reddington, and everywhere he goes there's an exaggerated tale. Lizzie wonders to herself sometimes, very quietly, what kind of stories he'll tell about her to somebody else, one day. When he's gone.
Please. Please stay. You've hurt me so much and I can barely stand to look at you without it hurting but all I want is for you to stay right here, stay right here. Stay, Red.
Don't go.
There's always a play, yes. She realizes this in Uzbekistan, but still, the sheer want that curls in the pit of her belly when he lays it all out for a corrupt businessman, when he takes control, it's daunting. It's daunting to want so much so bad. It's daunting and it's not like her and she hates him and she hates herself. This is the way it has to be.
The job, though. She's still got her job, and he's her job.
Men compartmentalize everything, so Lizzie figures she can too.
/
"I've never even seen you drive," she tells him, at the DMV.
She shouldn't be teasing, but here, of all places, she can't help herself.
Luthor Braxton made her wonder, though.
Truth be told, she knows he's probably never more content than in an old Caddy, open-highway.
Red was a normal person, once. He'd told her that. Playdates and bills to pay.
Normal people drive.
(For a split second, Lizzie imagines riding shotgun while he reached a hand over and slide his wide, warm palm between her legs, daunting, daunting. But, no. No, he's a job. She's his goal. She is an object to him, and a tawdry romp in a car would never happen. Silly, Lizzie. Fantasies are for girls.
She's not a girl, though. She's a woman. And all she wants, really, truly, is to know the taste of his tongue.)
/
She loathes that there's still a fraction of herself that longs to please him.
Dog and master. Choke chain around neck. Daddy and daughter, and oh, how she loathes it.
She finds it difficult to muster up the courage to talk back when he reprimands her for not finding a path around the Bureau's politics concerning the handling of the Kenyon Family situation. It puts ice in her veins, and people are always dying, but the way he acts as if it would be her fault, her fault because she's making herself the job, no personal. He would've have been this sharp with her before, she thinks, but he is, and it stings her, and she works to right her wrong.
She finds the proof they need to move forward on the Kenyon Family raid, but then things go south. Things go south, and nothing makes sense until it suddenly does, but by then it's too late.
One of these days, being too late might actually kill her.
So then they take Ressler, and then they take her—
And it's silly, funny, quaint, how she's sitting there, vying for exits, trying to mentally work with Ressler on methods of escape, when all of a sudden his voice echoes in her head, a mantra—
"I can't keep you safe if you shut me out, Lizzie."
He's not there, though.
He's not keeping her safe.
Lizzie physically shakes and shakes, ever so slightly, and she knows better.
Lizzie knows better, and she knows the only person in the world she can rely on is herself.
(Not even Ressler. Jesus. Isn't this, like, the third time Don has been taken this month?)
/
She closes David's eyes, and he was so close to making it.
"He never wanted you," she tells him. "But you're not your father. You're better than him."
But he didn't make it, and Lizzie closes his eyes and closes her eyes, briefly, as she steps away from the scene. She thinks of the fifty-three bodies, of all the children that have died, that have suffered. Lizzie thinks she's very tired, driving back to the Post Office.
She's tired, and if Red wanted something on that property they found nothing, so it was all moot.
Red is always wanting something, but she just wants him, and oh, how it hurts.
It tears her apart in the soft places she didn't know could hurt like they do.
/
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She's rubbing her eyes when her cellphone buzzes in her back pocket.
A text message from him. No voicemail, no call.
It's an address. The Audrey, she recognizes, and it makes her weary, but still, it's him, so.
So, she texts him back.
What?
Twenty seconds later, the reply is:
Very important. Please be here ASAP.
/
Lizzie thinks it's a new safe house.
She's wrong.
/
Somebody buzzes her in.
It's the top floor, top-of-the-line, and she expects it out of Raymond Reddington. Even the hallways are huge, the stairwells expensive and pristine. After coming from the grime and filth of morbidity, Lizzie feels dirty. Out of place.
With anxiety pricking, she goes to rap her knuckles against the door, but—
It's open. Lizzie takes a deep breath and starts inside, is greeted by a neutral entryway, potted plants all green, all life, booming in the small area. It definitely seems his taste, until—
Red calls her name, and it startles her from her reverie.
Jolts her.
Lizzie moves forward, forward, willing her trudging legs to move, until she sees him in all his glory. The first thing she notices is that he's leaned back, up against the marble countertops of the kitchen island. The layout of the penthouse is open, and from where she's standing, Lizzie can see the glistening of the Potomac through the bay windows. The couch is beige, true, everything neutral, but elegant. He is elegant, just standing there, in a way she could never be.
Lizzie pushes her messy bangs out of her eyes, suddenly angry.
Suddenly knowing.
"What is this, Red?"
He doesn't answer her question, and a mixture of emotions cross his face before he speaks, gravel like in the voicemails. Vulnerable.
"What do you think about it?"
Her cheeks bloom. "I think it's a gorgeous apartment. I don't know why I'm here."
He doesn't answer her, again. But this time he flounders, opens and closes his mouth, and he's desperate, she can tell, but she's desperate too, and all of a sudden ever ache comes back, and she feels dirty here, unwanted. She thinks she knows what this is, but she doesn't want to presume and be wrong. She hopes she's not presuming right.
Lizzie turns on her heel, air flipping with the speed, and moves to leave.
"Go to hell," she tosses over her shoulder, until—
"Lizzie," he cries out, loud, clear. Splitting. For a moment, Lizzie thinks he's actually crying.
She slams to a halt.
Pivots slowly, and no, he's not crying.
He just looks very, very broken.
Pleading. Brought to his proverbial knees.
"Red?" she starts, cautious. He takes more than a second to gather himself.
"Lizzie, wait. We can't just," he stops, shakes his head like he's at a loss, and maybe he is. His eyes are tinged red. "I can't not—"
"What?" she encourages. "What is this, Red?"
"This isn't a trade, Elizabeth. This isn't a bargaining chip."
She presumed right, it seems. Fuck.
"Red, I can't accept—
"You've been living out of a suitcase," he says, low, blinking too much. "And it's—it disgusts me."
Lizzie jerks like she's been hit in the face, shivering, and God, why is he saying something like that, it hurts, he's hurting—
"Because you deserve better," he keeps going, steadier. "You are worth so much to me, and—
"What I have is worth so much to you," Lizzie clarifies, because there, that's where she's got him. That's where she knows better. The realization is bitter tendrils in her veins, and even is her fingers are still trembling, it's grounding to know truth. The fulcrum. That's a truth.
But then, then Red splutters, hisses, "No."
Takes a step forward, takes her hands, even as she's trying to move away.
It's almost as if the moment he clasps her hands in his, is close enough to see whites of eyes, see hearts in eyes, her body betrays her. Won't let her leave.
"You are worth everything to me, and, Lizzie—
But he breaks off, looks down at her hands. Realizes that her hands aren't cold, they're just—
"You're shaking," he whispers, quieter than she's ever heard him.
Shocked.
His brows furrow, worry. Lizzie's cheeks heat, and she tries to pull away, but it's no use. Any protest won't work its way past her lips, won't touch the tender air.
"How long have you been shaking like this?"
There's a note, at the end of his words. Empathy, devastation. Raw concern.
Lizzie clears her thick throat, and yeah, there's tears in her eyes, and in the back of her voice box, and some falling down her cheeks. "Since…I remembered…"
He brushes his thumb over the scar, and oh God, oh, God—
She whimpers, there, out-of-place, in this ostentatious apartment, with his holding her hands like a discovery, and she's embarrassed, and wants to run, run, but—
She whimpers, and that whimper turns into a mewling sob, and he—
He takes her in his arms like it not a problem, like it's the job he was meant for. Like it's the only place in the world he'd want to be, and he holds her as if he's trying to protect her from anything outside, and the Potomac glitters, black, obscure. She wets his shirt with tears, and thinks of the fulcrum. And knows this is her apartment.
And knows nothing more than him, him and nothing more, and—
It's not her fault, when she mashes her moist lips against his, and nearly tackles his form with the weight of need.
It's not his fault when he doesn't bend, like knife to whetstone, when he takes her weight and he automatically frames her jaw, puffs his chest, and quietly—
Like it's just them in the world—
They kiss.
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tbc.
